


ghosts (How to Mourn an Exploding Man)

by likewinning



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-23
Updated: 2008-10-23
Packaged: 2018-01-26 04:39:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1674968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likewinning/pseuds/likewinning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post season 1. <em>Mohinder’s ghosts are angry ghosts; they crave vengeance, blood; they scream failure. The ghost here, sitting next to him, wants only company.</em>: After Peter’s explosion, Mohinder tries to hold himself together and Nathan… doesn’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ghosts (How to Mourn an Exploding Man)

“Suresh, do you know where my brother is?” Nathan asks, and Mohinder doesn’t answer. Nathan asks, through still-burnt lips, “Mohinder – do you know?” And Mohinder says, “Peter is dead.”

“No,” Nathan says. “He could be --”

Mohinder watches Nathan shift on his stiff hospital pillows, and he doesn’t remind Nathan that no one deigns _him_ worthy enough to know if Peter is alive or dead.

“How did I _get_ here, if Peter didn’t…”

“You were traumatized,” Mohinder says. “There are things you forget.”

Mohinder remembers every minute of his escape from Sylar. He remembers each second that he stood in front of Sylar’s body, each second that he wanted, _wanted_ to pick up the gun again. He remembers the minutes it took him to carry Peter away, to escape from his own apartment.

How could he forget, when his hands shake every time he takes out his keys to unlock his apartment? How could he forget, when every time he steps through that hallway he thinks of Peter and that sticky concoction of his blood and Peter’s blood all over his hands? If he looks hard enough, he can see the traces of blood left in his cab.

He hasn’t forgotten anything.

Since then, he has seen Mrs. Petrelli during a few of his hospital visits, but she looks straight through him. Even if Mohinder told her how he cared for her sons, how he _tried_ – even if he admitted that he gave up, Angela Petrelli would look straight through him.

Nathan did too, once.

“No,” Nathan says. His face is mangled, a sort of nightmare, but his eyes find Mohinder’s as he insists, “It was _Peter_. He regenerated. I _know_ it.”

The mad hope in Nathan’s eyes echoes the hope Mohinder and Peter each felt once, echoes the desire to find others and the desire to save the world. But Nathan has already saved the world, and he will never find what no longer exists. How do you find a man who has exploded?

When Mohinder scattered his father’s ashes, the process felt true, felt personal. This was tradition, this was what was supposed to happen (though not this soon, and not in this way). When he scrutinized the ashes, he saw pieces of bone mixed with dust. He knew his father was there, somewhere. None of this rings true when he thinks of Peter.

As Nathan’s heart rate sparks on the monitor, Mohinder doesn’t point out that if no one told him the first time Peter came back to life, they have no reason to tell him _now_.

He refused to believe in Peter, and so fate threw Sylar at him. He failed to cure Peter, and so fate put Nathan in the hospital, burned beyond recognition.

And Peter is gone.

For Mohinder, it takes away hope for reconciliation. For Nathan, it takes away brother and lover and blood and life; what Nathan has lost, what they had, Mohinder can only begin to understand. If the world was a stage, Peter and Nathan were a foreign film that lacked proper subtitles.

“I’m sorry, Nathan,” Mohinder says, for the fifth ninth twelfth time since this began. They have the same conversation every time Mohinder visits, in varying stages of lucidity.

Mohinder _is_ sorry, for all of this. Everyone he tries to help dies, but that strange man with the sword (“Hiro,” Nathan says, and his horrible face manages a grin), not the Company or the FBI or even Peter, finally took down Sylar. At least _that_ is over.

“Don’t be,” Nathan says. “Just stop _coming_ here without him.”

Peter is dead and Mohinder cannot pretend otherwise (all the fake people he meets, and he only knows how to be himself), and so Mohinder stops coming altogether. He follows Bennet’s plan, despite Matt’s insistence otherwise.

He goes to Geneva and Vienna. He goes to Paris, London, and Luxembourg. He goes to Beijing and New Delhi. Peter isn’t in any of these places, and neither is Nathan, but he feels them both.

He calls Molly and he wonders about Nathan’s children; he speaks with Matt and he misses him, too, for as much as he can miss someone he barely knows. Mohinder misses Molly’s sweet smile and blunt, well-meant truths, but he does not miss the apartment or New York. Though New York survived Peter’s explosion, ghosts haunt every street Mohinder walks down and every room in Mohinder’s apartment: ghosts of his father, of Sylar, and of Peter.

After Mohinder spends a week outside of the city attending seminars, visiting his mother, and leading on the new man with glasses, Nathan calls him. It has been three months, almost four, since New York almost exploded.

“Suresh,” says the throaty sharp voice, and Mohinder knows, but he still asks, “Nathan?”

“I need to see you,” Nathan says, thousands of miles away but _present_ , for the first time in months. “As soon as you’re -” he means home, but New York isn’t that. “Just get here, Mohinder,” Nathan says, and he hangs up.

He ends the final lecture early; Bennet will yell at him later, but talking to ten people in a room that holds two hundred is an embarrassing waste of time.

He rushes home, doesn’t sleep, thinks the whole flight of _Nathan_ , and what it will mean if Peter –

Because it has to be about Peter. It has to be. Everything up until now has been about him, somehow (even Sylar, even his _need_ to believe Sylar), and this won’t be different – even if he wants it to be.

*

He reaches the hospital but Nathan is gone. While he dials Nathan’s cell phone number, he remembers that he has it because of the time Peter jumped out of a window. Peter jumped, and Mohinder looked out after him. The fall seemed so _far_ , and only weeks before Peter had stumbled when he tried to float off Mohinder’s _couch_ , but Peter was gone, somewhere in the air – not flat on the ground, like Mohinder expected. Mohinder remembers that afterward, Nathan shoved a sleek white card business card at him, on the back of which Nathan had scribbled his number. Nathan said, here. If you find him, you call _me_.

It had always been that way; Peter was _Nathan’s_ to deal with, and now with Peter dead, Mohinder has stopped fighting that fact. Nathan took care of Peter, and sometimes it was beautiful and other times it was possessive and terrifying, and today when Nathan picks up and says, “I’m at Peter’s apartment,” Mohinder thinks, of course.

Mohinder has been there twice, but he remembers. He takes the stairs and arrives out of breath, expecting Peter’s warm, crooked smile and that stray lock of hair. In that second before the door opens, Mohinder thinks that when he sees Peter, he will hold Peter to him and say that he is sorry. He will say everything he wanted to when he saw Peter alive again at Kirby Plaza, everything he wanted to say when Peter saved him from Sylar –

But Nathan opens the door.

When the doctors spoke to Mohinder, they all told him the same thing. Nathan would never fully recover. The damage was worse than anything they had ever witnessed. “It’s a miracle he survived at all,” they repeated.

Mohinder doesn’t know what this is, then, that Nathan stands before him. Aside from the casual attire, he looks the way he did when they first met, when Nathan fed him to security.

He looks like a ghost.

“I don’t know,” Nathan says, before Mohinder asks. “I woke up, and I was -” he touches his clean-shaven face. For one absurd moment that Mohinder attributes to sleep deprivation, Mohinder wants to feel that smoothness after months of angry scars – but of course he doesn’t; of course he can’t.

“It was Peter,” Nathan says, as he closes the distance between them, as he reaches behind Mohinder to lock the door.

That’s when Mohinder understands that no one else is here, and no one else _has_ been here in months.

“How could Peter do this?” Mohinder asks. Though he sped up six flights of stairs, _Nathan_ leaves him breathless.

“He could heal,” Nathan says. “That’s why he – why I almost let him -”

“But how would that help _you_?”

Nathan thinks about it, but Mohinder knows that it makes no difference to Nathan _how_. For Nathan, Peter will be alive until he sees a body (which he _won’t_ , because exploding men become only ashes), and even then –

Mohinder will always remember the weight of Peter’s corpse.

“We knew a man, a friend of the family. Linderman.” Nathan grimaces; Mohinder tries to remember where he’s heard the name. “He healed my wife,” Nathan says. “He’s dead now, but maybe – maybe Peter unintentionally absorbed his ability.”

“It’s possible,” Mohinder says, but it isn’t. He knows what he saw in the sky that night, what they all saw. It’s a miracle that Nathan survived the blast, but Peter –

Two minutes ago, he was ready to grab Peter and hold him to his chest, as if they were so much closer than they ever really were. But Peter is dead.

“Don’t patronize me, Suresh.” Nathan turns away. This immediate anger drove Mohinder from the hospital numerous times, sometimes seconds after his arrival, but it won’t today. Not when Nathan called _him_.

Nathan rifles through the cabinets; he picks up books, picture frames, and old mail. By the door, Mohinder waits.

“If my brother is so dead,” Nathan mutters as he sifts through cell phone bills and clothing catalogues, “then why is his apartment still here? Why did my mother keep this place? Why are there lights, water, and gas?” Nathan holds up one of many envelopes. “Why is she getting his _mail_?”

“Because you’re all in denial, Nathan.”

Mohinder can’t imagine how it would have been, if during his first few days in New York he _hadn’t_ identified his father’s mangled corpse. Nathan will never have a body to bury or ashes to scatter, and that lack of closure must feel horrible.

“No.”

Mohinder enters the kitchen. The floor shines and the open cabinets reveal only non-perishable items; Mohinder must admit, he can’t see Angela Petrelli emptying out the cabinets _herself_ if she knew Peter was dead.

Mohinder steps closer until an inch separates his and Nathan’s feet. Nathan breathes heavily through his nose as he clenches his jaw. Mohinder wants to put his hands on Nathan’s shoulders and shake him, shake out this conviction, this denial. He wants to shake the memory of Peter out of Nathan, and with that accomplished, he wants to shake it out of himself. No more wry hopeful smiles, no more half-crazed belief that the World can be Saved – no more devastating defeat.

But what would they be, without Peter? Mohinder still has a purpose; Mohinder _tries_ for that, but Nathan –

“Those men,” Nathan says. He lifts his head, and his gaze shifts from the counter – from Peter’s misspelled name on an envelope – to Mohinder, “The ones who chased me in Vegas, the ones who looked for Peter here -”

“The Company?” Mohinder asks. “You think _they_ have him?”

“If Peter was alive, he would tell me,” Nathan says. “Unless they have him.”

“Nathan,” Mohinder says. He wants to put his hand on Nathan’s shoulder the way he saw Peter do for Nathan, but that kind of comfort isn’t possible, yet. “If Peter could survive a nuclear explosion – his _own_ nuclear explosion – how on _earth_ would a few Company goons be able to contain him?”

Nathan looks from Peter’s bills to Mohinder, and then he walks out of the kitchen. He trudges through the living room and he searches through drawers, cabinets, and beneath tables. Mohinder stares at the refrigerator, at post-its and Yankees magnets, and asks, “What are you looking for?”

“A drink,” Nathan says. “Peter never kept anything where my mother could find it, but I’m sure he has something.”

Nathan checks under the couch, around the bookshelves, and in the hall closet. “Nathan,” Mohinder tries once, to no success.

He abandons the kitchen – he suspects if he looks in the refrigerator he will find only with condiments and water bottles - and follows Nathan into Peter’s bedroom. The sheets are off white, cotton if Mohinder remembers correctly (which he does, he does); the comforter is deep dark blue and has a hole in the bottom left corner. Someone has been here to make the bed and fluff the pillows. There is not a trace of dirty laundry on the floor this time; even the hampers are empty. No book sits on the nightstand with its pages dog-eared. Dust covers every surface, but nothing looks out of place.

“Nathan,” Mohinder tries again. “We need to -”

“Ah,” Nathan says. He opens the nightstand drawer and reveals a small silver flask. “I knew this was here somewhere.” He lifts the flask and turns it to show Mohinder the initials, A.P.

“It belonged to my father,” Nathan explains as they sit down on the bed. The flask catches what little light the room provides, and Nathan flinches at his own brief reflection. As he turns the flask over and over in his hands, Nathan says, “I got Peter drunk for the first time off our dad’s scotch. It was stupid, of course, and Peter got _too_ drunk –” Nathan grins, and pauses. His hands stop fidgeting, and then start again. “Peter was just a kid. I was, too, I guess.”

Nathan uncaps the flask and sniffs. “Dad must have known about all the times before that, when Peter snuck into the liquor cabinet and then tried to cover up the missing liquid with water. I was away at school, but he and Peter always fought about something, and those minor delinquencies just added to it. But,” Nathan says, “Dad left this for him in the will, I guess as a sort of joke.” He puts the flask to his lips. “Ha, ha,” Nathan says, and takes a drink.

After he swallows, he says, “Peter and I hate scotch, but every time I think of him now, I get thirsty for it.”

He offers the flask to Mohinder, but Mohinder declines. He cannot take part in the scotch, either. Nathan glances around the room, left and right and back, and takes in what he’s seen a hundred times before, as though if he looks long enough, Peter will pop out from underneath the bed or from behind a bureau.

“What am I going to do,” Nathan asks, “if he doesn’t come back?”

Mohinder feels a chill that has little to do with the weather or the apartment. Months of visiting Nathan in the hospital, months of staring at severe burns and IV tubes and bandages, months of Nathan swinging from sorrow to anger and back, and this defeat still bewilders him. Mohinder tells Nathan the only thing that he knows.

“You’re going to survive.”

They look at each other. Mohinder thinks of Peter and for the first time in months, it makes him smile. He thinks not of the ghost that haunts both his apartment and this one, but of the young man in the taxicab who stared at the sky and babbled about destiny.

“How’s that?” Nathan asks. Though he sounds defeated, his eyes look less vacant. His eyes are Peter’s eyes, ever changing with the light. His eyes, now, are brown.

“Nathan,” Mohinder says, and he feels his smile widen, “you survived a nuclear blast, a fall from a great height, and the discovery that you have a – well, a superpower. You also made it through rather vicious election. You’ll live through this.”

“You sound like him.”

“Was it the ridiculous optimism that gave me away?”

Nathan laughs and it sounds like a cough, like an attempt to choke back tears, but Mohinder knows that Nathan has cried enough. Just as Mohinder has tried to believe that Peter is out there, somewhere, Nathan has tried to accept that Peter is gone.

Gone is a step closer to dead, at least.

Nathan clears his throat. He sits hunched over and looking at his hands, until Mohinder repeats, “You’ll get through this. We both will.”

And he doesn’t know what he means, really he doesn’t, until Nathan pushes him down, until he pulls at Nathan’s shirt collar, until Nathan’s teeth hit his teeth, until they adjust themselves. He doesn’t know, until Nathan’s firm warm mouth presses against his.

Even then, it takes a minute. Peter’s bed feels the way he remembers, soft comforter and softer sheets, dark blue and off-white, colors he always associates with Peter but now _Nathan_ –

Nathan tugs at his clothing, at both their clothing, and he sucks on Mohinder’s neck, sharp teeth everywhere, sharp shark teeth that gleam still Mohinder supposes, although in this position he can’t see them.

In a minute, Nathan blindly works the buttons on Mohinder’s shirt, but this action, those fingers that move steadily down his skin, wakes him.

“Nathan,” Mohinder says, and then louder, “ _Nathan_.”

Nathan’s eyes meet his. The light that peeks through the blinds makes them hazel; his pupils dilate.

Mohinder slowly sits up, and Nathan, despite the hunger in his eyes, allows it. Nathan watches Mohinder, and Mohinder watches him. They’re still on Peter’s bed, and Peter is still dead, or missing – or both, depending on who tells the story.

“I’m _not_ him, Nathan.” It’s all that he knows, anymore.

Nathan looks at him. Nathan says nothing. Nathan says nothing while Mohinder buttons his shirt again, while Mohinder stands and straightens the wrinkles out of his clothing – the way Nathan did, in this same room, a thousand times before –, while Mohinder runs a hand through his hair and wills his blood upward.

“I have to go home,” Mohinder says.

“I know.”

“I haven’t seen Molly in a week.”

“I know.” Nathan stays on the bed. Mohinder can’t remember if he has ever seen Nathan wear normal clothing, anything that hasn’t been impeccably tailored. Nathan looks grim and disheveled, and Mohinder knows he caused at least half of that.

“Have you -” Mohinder falters. He shouldn’t ask, really; it’s hardly his business, so instead he asks, “Have you been home yet?”

“This is home now,” Nathan says. He stands.

“You can’t stay here,” Mohinder says.

“I’ll clean it up,” Nathan says. He grins, but it lacks the usual bite. “Or I’ll hire someone to do it.”

“That isn’t what I meant.” Mohinder reaches out to him, but he cannot put his hand on Nathan’s shoulder, even after the way Nathan just kissed him – the way they just kissed, like old lovers reintroduced. Even with Peter gone, that gesture belongs to him, not Mohinder.

“I know,” Nathan says again. His eyes shine, but not from the light. “I need this to be here for him, when he comes back.”

It makes Mohinder want to _shake_ Nathan, to grab him and say that Peter _won’t_ , that he _can’t_ , but instead he asks, “What about your family?”

“They can’t see me like this.”

“But your children --”

“No.”

Mohinder doesn’t understand, but he nods. He doesn’t understand because he was raised an only child, because he was never very close to his mother or to his father, because he mourns what he’ll never have with Peter more than what he actually had.

He doesn’t understand, but he nods, and he feels brave enough to turn at the bedroom doorway – at _Peter’s_ bedroom doorway – and say, “If there’s anything -” but he lacks the courage to complete the sentence.

“I’ll call you,” Nathan says. If he was still a politician, Nathan would look straight into Mohinder’s eyes while he lied – but Nathan is just a man, now, so he looks at the doorframe above Mohinder’s head and two weeks pass before he and Mohinder see each other again.

*

Mohinder travels to Athens, Rome, and Vienna. For three days, he freezes in Moscow. He spends one day at home before Bennet sends him to Bogotá and Buenos Aires. With every plane trip Mohinder wonders how it would feel to be up here, with nothing to separate him from the clouds. He wonders if Nathan ever uses his ability, if he feels able to since Peter died.

He wonders if Peter is really dead.

The question hits him with more frequency as each day passes. It comes to him whenever he thinks of Nathan, because no matter how separate the brothers are now, by death or by what surely _looked_ like death, no matter how different they have always _been_ , Mohinder cannot think of one without the other. Peter lurks behind every conversation Mohinder has ever had with Nathan – and most of the time he _is_ the topic of conversation -, and when Mohinder thinks of Peter he thinks of the way Peter _spoke_ of Nathan.

“My brother,” Peter said the first time, with such pride. “My brother,” he said, with contempt at the way Nathan sometimes treated people (it has been two weeks now, and no word from Nathan). “ _Nathan_ ,” Peter said, as if that explained everything.

Nathan calls him in Budapest.

Nathan calls him and Mohinder takes his time coming home. He waits for a few hours at the hotel bar, but the Company man (the new man with the glasses) leaves without approaching him, so Mohinder gets on the plane. This time he drops his bags off at home first; this time he hugs Molly and looks at her schoolwork; this time he talks to Matt about his first week back as a police officer.

Matt talks excitedly about his job, the way Mohinder hasn’t for what feels like ages. Mohinder wants to help people, wants to save the world, but traveling all over it has made him realize how _large_ the world truly is, and how impossible it will be to save. Peter traveled as far as Texas and thought he made it, but Mohinder has been to Beijing and back and he hasn’t fixed anything: not a country, not a city – hardly his own family.

Peter is still dead.

Matt talks and Mohinder cooks dinner and Molly does her homework at the kitchen table, and for a few hours Mohinder feels at peace. He has never needed this domesticity, but it surprises him how easily he adapts to it. Around Molly, he and Matt pretend that bogeymen and Companies and exploding men are dreams are nightmares, but this place – despite the nights of insomnia, despite the ghosts - is slowly becoming home.

Nathan calls him again after dinner.

Nathan calls him and Matt looks at Mohinder for an explanation, and Mohinder thinks at him, _Even if you read my mind, it won't begin to make sense to you._ Matt could not gauge the entire scope of this with a few minutes inside Mohinder’s head. He and Nathan are not friends, exactly, but they are more than acquaintances. To explain his relationship with Nathan, Mohinder would have to explain his relationship with Peter – and the longer Peter stays dead, the more impossible that becomes.

Nathan is Nathan, and for Peter that explains everything, but for Mohinder it doesn’t come close. Mohinder goes to Nathan’s (to Peter’s) apartment and Nathan answers and he hasn’t shaved since the last time Mohinder saw him. Nathan opens his mouth in half a grin, and Mohinder half expects him to say, “It’s good to see you,” but he doesn’t. He just holds the door open and begins the search for something to drink.

*

“Peter used to run away, and wait for me to find him,” Nathan says as he sits down next to Mohinder. “My father -” Nathan pours the liquor, and it splashes clear as water into two scotch glasses, the only clean dishes left in the apartment. “My father always told me to ignore him. If we gave him that kind of attention, my dad said, we would spoil him. And Peter wasn’t in any real danger.” Nathan settles back against the couch. “My mother,” he says, “always agreed with my father, until she had a second to speak to me. She didn’t have to tell me, even then, but whenever Peter took off – he must’ve been eight, maybe, or nine – I followed him in the car, just in case.”

Almost all of the lights in the apartment stay off, and almost all of the windows, despite the February chill, stay open. Mohinder smells countless nights of alcohol and finds sparse clues that Nathan eats anything at all. Dust clings to everything.

“He wanted to be found,” Nathan says, and he takes a drink. Mohinder watches Nathan’s throat, which helps him ignore the speed at which Nathan empties the glass. Still, Mohinder feels more comfortable with the ghosts here than the ones that linger in the evening hours at his apartment. Mohinder’s ghosts are angry ghosts; they crave vengeance, blood; they scream failure. The ghost here, sitting next to him, wants only company.

Above the rim of the glass, Nathan’s eyes speak for an eternity about the two possibilities that present themselves: either Peter is dead, or he is trying not to be found. “I always knew where he was,” Nathan says. All of this Mohinder could solve, perhaps, if he asked Molly a simple question, but he isn’t sure he wants the truth, or if Nathan does. It took Mohinder long enough to accept the death of his father’s murderer; for Nathan, it must be –

“Even if he had a few hours head start, I knew,” Nathan continues. “This year, when Peter ran from us – that was the first time he ever – that I couldn’t -” Mohinder lowers his gaze until he hears Nathan clear his eyes and his throat. “He was just a kid then, of course I…”

They don’t mention that the age difference hasn’t _altered_. Peter is missing. Peter is dead. Whatever the case, Peter is not here, and Nathan feels responsible. Maybe Nathan is responsible, in the same sense that Mohinder is responsible. Maybe Peter should be here to explain himself. Maybe –

“You did everything you could,” Mohinder says. “You saved the world,” Mohinder says, and beneath Nathan’s two-week-old beard Mohinder thinks he spies a smile of some kind.

“Yeah,” Nathan says. “And here I just thought I’d be a congressman.”

“Well, I thought I’d just continue my father’s research,” Mohinder replies. “Things _change_ , Nathan. You don’t have to -” Mohinder stops himself. This is too much, this empty apartment with its disarray of dust and darkness, but Mohinder doesn’t know what he would do, if he lost what Nathan lost.

“I don’t have to what?” Nathan pours more into his glass, but he lets it sit on the table. He looks at Mohinder. Through two weeks of alcohol, through two weeks of technical health, through three and a half months of grief, he looks at Mohinder. “I don’t have to fall apart?”

“No,” Mohinder says. “You don’t. Not anymore.”

“So what should I do instead?”

“For a start,” Mohinder says, “you could try shaving.”

Nathan laughs, but it is only the spirit of a laugh. His teeth show, but that gleam of the eyes stays buried. “We can’t all have perfect five o’clock shadows all the time, Doctor,” Nathan says. In response, Mohinder finally picks up his glass; his eyes water from the strong scent alone.

“One of the doctors of the hospital,” Nathan tells him, as he watches Mohinder put the glass down again, “once I was more lucid, one of the doctors tried to joke with me. It must’ve been the second week – I think you’d been there, but I was…” Mohinder nods. After the initial shock, they had Nathan buried under painkillers. “The doctor said, look, on the upside, you’ll never have to shave again.”

“So what’s this? You’re trying to prove him wrong?” For as little as he knows Nathan, Mohinder knows Nathan will do anything to _prove_ that he can – which only adds to Nathan’s inability to accept Peter’s death (Peter’s disappearance).

“Maybe,” Nathan says. “Or maybe every day I don’t shave, it’s another day that Peter should be here, and he isn’t. But mostly,” Nathan says, “I think that if I tried to shave right now, I’d cut my throat.”

“You wouldn’t,” Mohinder says, unable to stop himself. “I wouldn’t allow you to.”

Nathan’s eyes are at once distant and immensely present, and in them Mohinder sees not only Nathan’s mother or brother but also _Nathan_ , everything that Nathan might have been, everything that Nathan is. Nathan looks directly at him. “You think you can stop me, Suresh? You think you can fix this?” he asks, and Mohinder fills in the rest – you think you can fix this, when you couldn’t even –

In his rush to get out, get _away_ , Mohinder’s leg jostles the table and sends the second-to-last dish in the apartment rolling to the floor. But before he moves any further – he could clean up the glass, or he could _run_ – Nathan grabs him. “I didn’t mean it like that,” Nathan says.

Mohinder looks from Nathan’s firm grip on his arm to Nathan’s solid, sincere eyes. No ghost of a congressman lurks there, now. He is someone else, at least for now. In the dim lamplight, his eyes shine dark brown.

Nathan is someone else, but he is also Peter’s brother and Mohinder’s – friend –, and he is Nathan Petrelli. He is Nathan Petrelli, and he is standing up, and they are practically the same height but Mohinder feels – feels intimidated, somehow, even now. Especially now. It’s unclear what he should feel, and shouldn’t, and none of it matters because Nathan puts his hands on Mohinder’s shoulders and he says, “I need you here.”

It shouldn’t surprise him when Nathan kisses him, because even now Mohinder wouldn’t put it past Nathan to have planned this – he is a Petrelli, after all, and Mohinder can’t recall many moments with either brother that didn’t hint of slight manipulation – but it does surprise him. It does. His mouth opens in shock when Nathan’s hand touches the back of his neck, and Nathan takes that as an invitation, and Mohinder suspects Nathan would take his mouth even if Mohinder _hadn’t_ inadvertently offered it.

Nathan kisses Mohinder and it feels different from Peter or Sylar or anyone else, and not just because of the way Nathan’s thick beard brushes against Mohinder’s cheeks. Nathan kisses Mohinder and all the thousand things Mohinder could have said, would have said, wanted to say, die between Mohinder’s lips and Nathan’s, except one.

Mohinder uses all of his strength to push Nathan back a step, and he looks at Nathan and he says, “I’m not _him_ , Nathan.”

Nathan looks at him, and his eyes seem as sure and sharp and alive as the man Mohinder remembers, but they seem different, also. Nathan is different, which is why when Nathan says, "I know," Mohinder nods in brief acknowledgement before he pulls Nathan back to him and kisses him. Mohinder is not Peter, and Nathan is not Peter, and that is exactly the point. Peter is not _here_ , perhaps not anywhere at all but in their minds, lurking like some beautiful ghost - so they stumble toward the bedroom and undress, and when they come quietly, Mohinder first and Nathan shortly after, Mohinder knows it is all either of them can do to keep from saying Peter's name. And it's all right, because Mohinder leaves for Cairo before morning.


End file.
